Almost all RPGs belong to a series. The Tales of series, the Star Ocean series, and the ever-popular Final Fantasy series, to name a few. My question is, is it fair to consider these games as part of a series? Allow me to explain.

There is no real connection between Star Ocean Second Story and Star Ocean Till the End of Time. None of the characters are the same, none of the items are the same, and the battle systems are notably different. The only similarity is that both of them take place in the future and the main character lands on an underdeveloped planet.

My question is, if you’re going to put a game in the same universe and give it the same name, why not make it a sequel? Then I remember Final Fantasy X-2 and how disappointing it is to have a great game ruined by the next in the series.

Is it better or worse for two games with the same title to have the same storyline? If Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII don’t follow the same overall story, or don't occur in the same universe, they shouldn’t have the same name. They should be treated as separate games, not as part of one larger series.

Naturally, I wanted to find out what other people thought about this. The first response was, “if a group of games, like the Final Fantasy games, have similar gameplay, they should have the same name.”

Tell me if this sounds right: There are 12 Final Fantasy games, and according to this guy, the fact that they all have the same name should mean they all have similar gameplay. Normally people don’t like it when they’re playing the same game over and over again, right? So why are the Final Fantasy games so popular? That doesn’t make sense at all.

All of the final Fantasy games are different. All of them use different item and equipment systems, and most of them have fairly different systems for taking turns in battle. So once again I went to the message boards, asking why games that are totally different should have the same name.

My next response was that the Final Fantasy games all have similar things like Chocobos, Moogles, and Airships, but I didn't quite buy that either. When Square was making all of these games, they could have simply not put in those things and each game would have been a totally different experience. In the end the only possible reason they could have for giving them all the same name is for marketing.

Because one Final Fantasy game is good, people will buy the next one even if it’s a completely different experience, just because it’s called Final Fantasy.